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MONTREAL — Note to Michel Lalonde: this is NOT what democracy looks like.

Citing the “continuity of provincial democracy,” the president of Genius Conseil (formerly Groupe Séguin) told the Charbonneau Commission this week that his associates and family members all made contributions to the three provincial political parties — and the firm paid the associates back with generous Christmas bonuses.

Known as a prête-nom, or frontman scheme, the ruse allowed the firm, eager to keep its place at the provincial trough of public contracts, to contribute, from 1999 to 2009, $117,000 to the Parti Québécois, $94,000 to the Liberal Party of Quebec and $29,000 to the Action démocratique du Québec, which has since folded into the Coalition Avenir Québec.

Given that only individuals — not businesses — were allowed to contribute up to $3,000 each per year, it meant a large proportion of illegal contributions on the part of the firm.

The firm, meanwhile, got more than $25 million in contracts from the provincial Transport Department.

“It’s been this way since (premier Maurice) Duplessis,” Lalonde told the commission. “You get projects, you donate.”

It’s not the first time such a scheme has been uncovered, of course. In 2010, with the help of Amir Khadir, then the co-leader of Québec solidaire, the Directeur général des élections du Québec was able to successfully prosecute Axor, another engineering consultancy, for inciting 40 of its employees and associates to write cheques to the three political parties totalling $152,500.

Khadir had accused four firms of contravening the electoral law, including SNC-Lavalin, CIMA+ and BPR, but only Axor employees admitted to being part of a scheme to make contributions on behalf of the company. Three companies associated with Axor were fined almost $88,000, and the political parties had to reimburse the DGEQ for the illegal contributions.

But, says DGEQ spokesperson Denis Dion, it takes a whistleblower (or confessor) like Lalonde to come forward to make this kind of prosecution happen.

“If we don’t have information, we can’t do anything,” Dion said. “That is our main difficulty. The Charbonneau Commission and the media are useful in explaining the system and showing the stratagems and showing how the law is broken. But we have the extra challenge of bringing people and documents before the court to prove there was an infraction.”

As a disincentive for such schemes, the fines for using a frontman to make political contributions have increased tenfold, Dion said, and since Jan. 1 of this year, the maximum annual contribution for an individual is now $100. (It was reduced to $1,000 from $3,000 in 2011). So whereas previously 10 employees could contribute $30,000 to a party, it would now take 300 employees to contribute that amount.

“With a $100 maximum, you have to have a lot of uncles and brothers-in-law to have enough people to sign cheques,” Dion said.

The DGEQ is now also working closely with Revenue Quebec, Dion said, though he wouldn’t specify how.

That said, with reimbursements made in cash, or in brown envelopes, and in parking lots or dimly lit restaurants, it’s still difficult to catch people, Dion continued.

“If the investigator goes to see people and they say no, it’s not true, it was a personal contribution, the maximum amount was respected and everything is kosher, if no one wants to come and say what (Lalonde) is saying on TV ... that’s what we need, this kind of candid statement.”

The fact that someone contributes to all political parties — whichever is in power — may be a clue that the motive behind the generosity is not to participate in the democratic process by donating according to one’s political convictions, but rather to exercise one’s “business convictions” or search for profit.

Bruce Hicks, a political scientist at Carleton University, said frontman schemes are not unique to Quebec. In Alberta, for instance, despite the maximum allowable contribution by individuals or companies being set at $30,000 annually, the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Daryl Katz, had family and associates contribute a total of $430,000 to the Conservative party when it seemed in danger of losing the provincial election in 2012.

“We have the two extremes,” Hicks said. “Quebec has the most stringent electoral laws and Alberta has the most lax. But, as we’ve seen in recent cases, these (frontman) schemes are used in both environments.”

The difference, says Hicks, is that in Alberta, the contributions were not necessarily seen as illegal by Elections Alberta.

“(In Quebec) the scandals with the Charbonneau Commission and before that with the sponsorship scandal have rocked the province so much that politicians are addressing this from a philosophical point of view of what is right and what is fair ... and there is a discussion of electoral rules from first principles, which I don’t think you’re seeing in other jurisdictions.”

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